My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

On 28 October 2008 (Official Report, Commons, col. 720), in answer to an oral supplementary question from the honourable Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Gisela Stuart) about voting systems, I said that, “my honourable friend will remember that the closed list system was a manifesto commitment in 1997”.

This was incorrect. The 1997 Labour Party manifesto commitment was for the introduction of proportional representation for European elections and did not detail that a closed list system should be used. It was agreed subsequent to the 1997 election that a closed list system should be used.